Finally, we have some real performance gains to analyze!

Doom 3 showed a whopping 47% average performance gain for the highest overclock, after just a measly 9% gain for the first overclocking attempt. The huge difference between the two overclock settings shows just how valuable an extra fan can be!

CPU-intensive applications show at least a 30% gain for the highest overclock setting, but a minimal 12% gain for the initial attempt.

Synthetics show a smaller average performance gain from overclocking than the games and applications we tested. Of course, they are meant to be more comprehensive, by synthesizing applications that we didn’t test.

And there you have it. Increasing the CPU clock speed and tightening the memory timings by 25% allowed us to gain an average 30% performance advantage over the system’s default settings.

Conclusion

A 30% average performance gain from adding nothing more than a side cooling fan to our previously-tested System Marathon High-End Build appears remarkable, but we’re not done yet. Don Woligroski is promising a spectacular new low-cost build, with the enormous overclocking that only a low-speed processor can achieve. We don’t expect it to climb to this system’s performance levels, but will it be close enough to the high end to win as the ultimate "bang-for-the-buck" machine?

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